When “The Incredibles” hit theaters in 2004, it was arguably the greatest superhero movie of all time (and remains at or near the top of the list to this day). Between the pulse-pounding action sequences and the family story at its core, Brad Bird’s Pixar debut was a game changer on a number of levels. When years had passed without a whisper of talk regarding a follow-up, it made sense. After all, walking in the shadow of that film is a fool’s errand, and yet, everyone still wanted them to try. And here we are.

It is not lost on Ryan Reynolds that the best trick that “Deadpool” had under its sleeve was the element of surprise, and that that is gone now. He’s admitted that he’s not sure if he has a third “Deadpool” movie in him, and personally, I think he should listen to that voice. That is not a commentary on the quality of “Deadpool 2,” for the record. It’s as entertaining as the original film, and arguably funnier. The story structure, though, is a bit too close to a certain Rian Johnson film, and more importantly, how far can you take this joke before it runs out of gas? As it is, these films are a couple of bad jokes away from being parodies (“Meet the Supers”?). Indeed, if the closing credit jokes are any indication, Reynolds has already cashed in his chips, and plans to go out on top right here and now.

“Rampage” was a slyly subversive video game. Players earn points by unleashing their inner monster to break stuff and stick it to the Man (kill or eat soldiers dispatched to shoot them down). “Rampage” the film, however, is mostly joyless, and takes itself waaaaaaay too seriously, a stark contrast to the tone set in the trailers, which suggested something light-hearted and self-aware. The full-length film is neither of those things.

Watching the beginning of “A Wrinkle in Time” felt eerily similar to watching 2017’s film adaptation of “It,” in that the film was enjoyable but in a bubble, a product of its time. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the present the next day, when a high school classmate of mine expressed concern that the filmmakers were going to ruin the last two chapters of the book in order to make political statements.

There is a lot to unpack in “Black Panther.” Solid arguments are made on both sides of the topic of isolationism versus open borders. An outsider armed with a dark heart and fiery rhetoric assumes power, and literally burns sacred traditions to the ground. The governing body of the fictional country of Wakanda splinters, turning countrymen against each other. They’re not being subtle here: this is as Trumpian a movie as the Marvel Cinematic Universe will ever see (one hopes, anyway). On top of this, the movie is led by a group of strong women, who symbolically serve as the #MeToo component. “Black Panther” is so ridiculously of the moment that it’s tempting to believe that, between the perfect timing of “Zootopia” (race relations) and this film, Disney has “Minority Report”-style pre-cogs in its employ, scanning the future in order to read the room, as it were.

The official trailer for “Downsizing” does an impressive job of convincing the viewer that the film is a comedy. Let us make one thing clear: this is not a comedy. It’s occasionally amusing, and at some point in the script’s development, it may have been a biting social satire. And then the first act ends, at which point the movie doesn’t just lose its way: it falls off a cliff. Whatever point it was originally trying to make is long forgotten by the end of Act II, and Act III is completely rudderless. Alexander Payne is “credited” with directing the film, but it’s clear that he was bound, gagged, thrown in a locker and left for dead the moment Matt Damon’s character makes the jump to Smallville.

At the beginning of the decade, no one could blame Pixar staffers if they thought their offices were bugged. In 2008, Pixar announced that they were beginning work on a film called “Newt,” about a male and female blue-footed newt that were the last of their kind, paired up by scientists to save the species. Set for release in 2011, the film was scrapped in early 2010 once the studio discovered that 20th Century Fox’s Blue Sky Studios was about to release a film called “Rio,” about a male Spix’s macaw who’s taken from his home to mate with another Spix’s macaw. A few months after “Newt’s” cancellation, “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich, on the heels of the film’s out-of-the-gate success, announced plans to make a film about Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration.

When word first started circulating that “Thor: Ragnarok” would have a much lighter tone than its predecessors, that seemed strange for about three seconds, and then one remembers “Thor: The Dark World,” and welcomes the new approach with open arms. The end result is indeed heavier on laughs, but it also sports one of the higher body counts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One wonders which came first in the story development; were the laughs added as a spoonful of sugar to help the (violent) medicine go down? It would not surprise us in the slightest if that were the case.

The beauty of films like “Kingsman: The Secret Service” is that once they’re seen, they can’t be unseen, and the world is forever different than it was before. Matthew Vaughn’s turbo-charged 2015 film completely rewrote the rules for spy films, depantsing its spy predecessors in the process. The best James Bond films look positively ancient by comparison, and even relative spy newbies like Jason Bourne and “Mission: Impossible” hero Ethan Hunt show the age of their source material when viewed through, ahem, “Kingsman” lenses.